“Simple motor actions, like moving marbles upward or downward between two cardboard boxes, may not seem meaningful. But a study published April 2010 in Cognition shows that motor actions can partly determine people’s emotional memories.
Moving marbles upward caused participants to remember more positive life experiences, and moving them downward to remember more negative experiences, according to Daniel Casasanto (MPI and Donders Institute, Nijmegen) and Katinka Dijkstra (Erasmus University, Rotterdam). ‘Meaningless’ motor actions can make people remember the good times or the bad.
When people talk about positive and negative emotions they often use spatial metaphors. A happy person is on top of the world, but a sad person is down in the dumps. Some researchers believe these metaphors are a clue to the way people understand emotions: not only do we use spatial words to talk about emotional states, we also use spatial concepts to think about them.”
Read more at Science Daily
I’m sure people are quite aware of their upward and downward movements inside their selves … although might become more clear with ageing or depends on the type of person you are.
Some might feel most up in their down structures and others down in their up structures. Changes with ageing and might be partially gender-related.
I don’t need marbles to check that. People that check theirselves, take interest in those things inside theirselves will have come up with the same conclusion and will use that knowledge to their own benefit (most do this already without knowing).
What about the back and front system .. and the one in the midst .. the center point … You can experience all these spaces in your mind .. in your self. I’m sure I’m not the only one who sees/feels it that way.
Oh, and let us not forget about the left and the right … watching people from the left eye .. or from behind the right eye … triggers a different structure on the inside for sure …
It is a crazy but interesting ride in there .. but we all need to get back to our bases .. otherwrise ..
Childeren like to jump, hoover around in their upper structure .. they don’t have a clue what they should see inside yet .. (most) nor in their normal self .. it makes them more light .. We start investigating these structures around us in ourselves pretty fast .. our toolbox .. If things go well, that is.
I’m too old for the marble test I think. Nor is my interest in these things from that side .. although I do use body systems to trigger certain systems in the brain.
i think when the conscious minded is entertained it leves the unconscious mind to brood over old memories and the physical movement alouds the mind to decided what type of memory you think of. I find the 2 sayings are every intresting as they can be linked to this experiment.
Not convinced. Up is not always a positive metaphor; for example “up hill struggle” as opposed to a “downhill cruise”
wondered then, if you felt sad /negative memory. if you were to physically and mentally go upwards, with your arms in the air or looking up etc, would this make it more difficult to think of that negative.. i spose actually people do show to do this when their upset, i mean when i feel tears wealing up i look upwards and tilt my headback ,as i think many people do, is this to do with this theory on people’s emotions being determined?
well, isnt that the whole idea behind ballet & most other dancing? aspiring to heaven & all that?
EVERYBODY PUT YOUR ARMS IN THE AIR AND SWAY!
I’m probably going to make a complete arse of myself by posting the product of a faulty memory but I recall something from Prof Richard Wiseman’s book “59 Seconds” where positive and negative feelings could be affected by holding and pulling / pushing a table.
I really ought to go back and check it out. There’s so much stuff in that book, all of it golden, that confusion is a distinct possibility at this stage!
lol @ Jess!
“Put ya arms up in the air, put ya arms up, in the air”
See the ravers of the 90′s had it right. It wasn’t the copius amounts of E making them happy it was all that arm raising.
A chapter in my e-book is called “Upside down” comparing ordinary consciousness with that of a mystic.
“In this life, most people move much like a small boat in an ocean, rolling up on a wave of happiness, then sinking down with sadness, punctuated with pleasant calm seas and the occasional turbulent storm. Confusing feelings too often reign in the individual, ego self. ”
When we give up the ego and individuality, even momentarily, we cannot be affected by the attractions or attacks of the world. We attain equanimity which allows us to make sound judgements not colored by emotions.